Posted on 03/21/2018 10:47:49 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Some might say its paranoid to think about an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping us out. But the history of life on Earth shows at least 5 major extinctions. And at least one of them, about 65 million years ago, was caused by an asteroid.
Preparing for an asteroid strike, or rather preparing to prevent one, is rational thinking at its finest. Especially now that we can see all the Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) out there. The chances of any single asteroid striking Earth may be small, but collectively, with over 15,000 NEAs catalogued by NASA, it may be only a matter of time until one comes for us. In fact, space rocks strike Earth every day, but theyre too small to cause any harm. Its the ones large enough to do serious damage that concern NASA.
NASA has been thinking about the potential for an asteroid strike on Earth for a long time. They even have an office dedicated to it, called the Office of Planetary Defense, and minds there have been putting a lot of thought into detecting hazardous asteroids, and deflecting or destroying any that pose a threat to Earth.
One of NASAs proposals for dealing with an incoming asteroid is getting a lot of attention right now. Its called the Hyper-velocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response, or HAMMER. HAMMER is just a concept right now, but its worth talking about. It involves the use of a nuclear weapon to destroy any asteroid heading our way.
The use of a nuclear weapon to destroy or deflect an asteroid seems a little risky at first glance. Theyre really a weapon of last resort here on Earth, because of their potential to wreck the biosphere. But out in space, there is no biosphere. If scientists sound a little glib when talking about HAMMER, the reality is theyre not. It makes perfect sense. In fact, it may be the only sensible use for a nuclear weapon.
The idea behind HAMMER is pretty simple; its a spacecraft with an 8.8 ton tip. The tip is either a nuclear weapon, or an 8.8 ton kinetic impactor. Once we detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, we use space-based and ground-based systems to ascertain its size. If its small enough, then HAMMER will not require the nuclear option. Just striking a small asteroid with sufficient mass will divert it away from Earth.
If the incoming asteroid is larger, or if we dont detect it early enough, then the nuclear option is chosen. HAMMER would be launched with an atomic warhead on it, and the incoming offender would be destroyed. It sounds like a pretty tidy solution, but its a little more complicated than that.
A lot depends on the size of the object and when its detected. If were threatened by an object weve been aware of for a long time, then we might have a pretty good idea of its size, and of its trajectory. In that case, we can likely divert it with a kinetic impactor.
But for larger objects, we might require a fleet of impactors already in space, ready to be sent on a collision course. Or we might use the nuclear option. The ER in HAMMER stands for Emergency Response for a reason. If we dont have enough time to plan or respond, then a system like HAMMER could be built and launched relatively quickly. (In this scenario, relatively quickly means years, not months.)
One of the problems is with the asteroids themselves. They have different orbits and trajectories, and the time to travel to different NEOs can vary widely. And things in space arent static. We share a region of space with a lot of moving rocks, and their trajectories can change as a result of gravitational interactions with other bodies. Also, as we learned from the arrival of Oumuamua last year, not all threats will be from our own Solar System. Some will take us by surprise. How will we deal with those? Could we deploy HAMMER quickly enough?
Another cautionary factor around using nukes to destroy asteroids is the risk of fracturing them into multiple pieces without destroying them. If an object larger than 1 km in diameter threatened Earth, and we aimed a nuclear warhead at it but didnt destroy it, what would we do? How would we deal with one or more fragments heading towards Earth?
HAMMER and the whole issue of dealing with threatening asteroids is a complicated business. Well have to prepare somehow, and have a plan and systems in place for preventing collisions. But our best bet might lie in better detection.
Weve gotten a lot better at detecting Near Earth Objects,(NEOs), Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs), and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) lately. We have telescopes and projects dedicated to cataloguing them, like Pan-STARRS, which discovered Oumuamua. And in the next few years, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will come online, boosting our detection capabilities even further.
Its not just extinctions that we need to worry about. Asteroids also have the potential to cause massive climate change, disrupt our geopolitical order, and generally de-stabilize everything going on down here on Earth. At some point in time, an object capable of causing massive damage will speed toward us, and well either need HAMMER, or another system like it, to protect ourselves and the planet.
Anyhow, we have a space program and they didn't.
Despite all our computer skills, these things sometimes come as a surprise. But yeah, much worse than anyone can imagine.
Its not a matter of if, but when another asteroid will be on a course to impact the Earth.
Yep. just what we need - tons of radioactive material the size of buses and trains, and cities falling on us...
NASA needs to stay with climate change and other silliness and NOT get all of us killed.
Thanks. With more and better telescopes coming online all the time, they’re going to have most of these things mapped out real soon. Then we can all sleep better!
Did you like it? I’ve seen trailers and thought it looked silly.
NASA has been proposing versions of this since the early seventies
If you are off by one degree leaving earth for a trip to the moon, a mere 238,900 miles you will miss it by 4,169 miles but of course, what could possibly go wrong?
Then, we can create a very large cesta to scoop it out of the sky and swoosh it in another direction.
There... problem solved.
-PJ
We never know?
That future rock might kill a future cochroach Hitler in that far distant future.
You reading this post, on the other hand, might make you get annoyed and step on some cochroach in anger, thus preventing the above envisioned scenario altogether.
You killed their humble, but insideous, founding father who was in hiding behind your fridge hatching his plot for global domination.
In other words - I might have just made you a galactical hero.
You can send me cases in beer as an expression of gratitude.
I think we both just became guardians of the galaxy and deserve to kick back and celebrate our accomplishments.
Cheers,
Fellow Guardian of the Galaxy and enemy of cochroaches.
Like nothing could go wrong there.... They’d probably split it in two, and instead of one big one hitting somewhere, two big ones would hit two places....
I’d just say this... as a believer in God, His book tells me that mankind has been around less than 10,000 years. In that time, never ONCE, outside of a Hollywood movie, have we had a cataclysmic disaster by asteroid.
Why the panic now? Because Hollywood writers put the notion out there in every 3rd movie they produce...
The Book also tells us how it will end here. No asteroid collision, if I’m reading it clearly.
So, I just dont believe we have any reason to worry about this. But that’s me. To each his own.
What a great idea!
BUT just a few questions ...
Are they really thinking of launching megabombs on rockets that might fail and crash back to earth? I mean, what could go wrong?
And are they going to "practice" before they think they have to do this for real? Blowing up an asteroid looks easy in the arcade game, but is it?
And if they a really able to blow apart an asteroid anywhere close to the earth, how many (not so) little pieces will fall here anyway (or because)?
ML/NJ
I think I agree with you.
As a believer I do put my trust in God.
If God wants us to leave the planet, we will do so.
Though:
“The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” (Rev 8:1011)
Make of it what you will... I do not know what to think of it. It could sound like some sort of celestial impact. But, if it is - it is also part of the story that God has written before the creation of the world.
So, perhaps, it is wrong by humanity and a continuation of our rebellion that started in the Garden of Eden, to try to stop this destiny.
Personally, I think we should listen to our hearts and do what we think is best, then pray to God that we are right.
But, beware of Biblican dogma, imho, except what Jesus himself said:
“Be a decent chappes and decent lasses, will you.
“
One group places odds at one-per-thousand-years on average. Seventy percent of impacts should fall in an ocean producing tsunami with little evidence of a crater.
But, you are ignoring possible very long orbit meteors.
Simply nothing can protect from the long period comet.
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